#GameofThrones +2: 5 Thoughts From The Queen’s Justice

Two days removed from Game of Thrones “The Queen’s Justice” here are the five things that stand out.

1. Dany is a terrible queen so far.
Daenerys Targaryen is proof that great campaigners don’t necessarily make great leaders.
For someone who endured so much hardship in her life, Dany woefully underestimated the work it would take to be the queen of the seven kingdoms. She’s got the best LinkedIn title ever: The Unburnt, Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Queen of Meereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons. But she seems to have waltzed up the mountain on Dragonstone assuming Jon Snow would bend the knee and Cersei would be a pushover. WRONG.

Jon Snow had no time for her attempt to hold him to the oath of his ancestors while at the same time disowning her own familial legacy. He’s not a sterling diplomat himself, but he got what he wanted from this diplomatic visit – the dragon glass – while having to make no concessions of his own. In the business, Dany, we call that getting rolled.

And then there’s her actual enemy: Cersei. She’s playing chess while Dany and Tyrion are playing checkers. In two episodes they lost the Greyjoy fleet entirely and orphaned the Unsullied by drastically over-estimating the value of Casterly Rock, which Cersei expertly anticipated, taking Highgarden in the process. Oops.

In real life we’d say Dany needs to bring in a new chief of staff and send Tyrion to the private sector. In Game of Thrones, she needs to take a page from the Underwoods and turn over the table or she and her dragons are won’t have anything to show for their first 100 days.

2. Cersei is dead inside
Speaking of Cersei, she gone. Losing her first two children pushed her to the edge and her last child threw himself over it. Once he went splat she lost all sense of give a damn. I think she’ll make it to the end of the show, but she’s in a downward spiral from which she won’t recover. She’ll either be dead or alone, and I think she’d rather be dead. Either way, she doesn’t even care. This makes her even more threatening to Dany’s ambition.

Plus, if she’s not careful she’s going to lose Jamie. Wouldn’t that be something – Jamie as the character who killed a king and abandoned a queen. Quite a legacy.

3. Tyrion is having a bad stretch
Tyrion is like that employee who was a great interview but a terrible hire. What does he have to show for his Lannister cunning? Well he got no fleet and he’s about to got no Unsullied. You have to wonder how someone who underestimates his enemies this badly managed to survive for so long.

4. Bran is the worst
Here he is back from god knows where after you’ve been through hell and instead of a smile and a hug you get Mr. Mood Ass. Sansa has to go down as one of the top five sisters ever for putting up with his crap, up to and including referencing the night she was raped.

BUT, I think re-uniting these two is an important move in light of Sansa’s weekly snark off with Petyr. For the first time, he holds his own and cautions her to “Fight every battle, everywhere, always. In your mind, everyone is your enemy. Everyone is your friend. Every possible series of events is happening all at once. Live that way and nothing will surprise you. Everything that happens is something that you see before.”

Literally at the very end of that line we get some Bran, who explains in the most arrogant way possible that as the Three-Eyed Raven, “I can see everything. Everything that’s ever happened, to everyone. Everything that’s happening right now.” Well how about that, that’s just the kind of insight Petyr just told her she needs.

One more thing…how will Bran react when the supposed bastard of Ned Stark returns? I keep watching scenes with Jon thinking, “I hope someone in this conversation knows he’s not a Stark.”

5. What’s with that look, Spider?
The conversation between Melisandre and Lord Varys came to a strange ending, didn’t it? We know The Red Woman’s got some shit, but what’s with hinting that she has to die in Westeros just like he does? And why did that elicit such a pained reaction?